Abstract

I am distressed. Sartre must have suffered a great deal from the irretrievable loss of his eyes. He was a generous and courageous man. He always defended the cause of the unfortunate, of the exploited, and of the oppressed. He always struggled for freedom, most often with the communists and, if necessary, against them. He believed in the strength of reason and in the contagious power of the idea of freedom. But above all, for me and I have said it several times, he was our Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He reminded me irresistably of the statement of Marx about Rousseau; which I quote from memory: “This man, who, no matter what his follies, was of a profound intransigence, and who never accepted the least compromise with established power.”